Did you ever touch a hot stove as a child and burn yourself? Did you do that a second time? Odds are quite good that you didn’t because the painful burning sensation from your first experience imprinted itself on your sensory memory. You learned to associate that unpleasant stimulus with touching a hot stove.

Unfortunately, approximately 5 percent of grade-school children are unable to process a sensation, such as burning fingers on a hot stove, as something to be avoided in the future because it is painful. This is due to a condition known as sensory processing disorder, in which children have difficulty understanding, detecting, or communicating about sensory stimuli around them. This condition can often come as a result of trauma to the upper part of the spine during birth, causing the vertebrae to shift out of alignment.

Fortunately, chiropractic care can help with some of the symptoms of sensory processing disorder. Below, Dr. Nathen Horst explains the signs of this condition, what causes it, and how chiropractic adjustments may be able to help.

What Is Sensory Processing Disorder?

As the example with the hot stove shows, there is a connection between your ability to sense a stimulus (the pain from touching a hot stove) and what to do in response (quickly pull your hand away). Your brain then forms a sensory memory that tells you touching a stove which is hot will cause pain.

A child with sensory processing disorder has trouble not only associating the stimuli with the correct action to take in response, but also remembering which action produced the stimulus in question. Furthermore, the child may also not be able to properly explain what caused the stimulus, nor how they responded to it.

Some research appears to show that sensory processing disorder may be related to ADHD or some of the autism spectrum disorders. Some signs in early childhood development can include: Speech delays; abnormal early motor development; and poor balance and coordination with frequent falls.

What Causes Sensory Processing Disorder?

There are numerous theories as to what causes sensory processing disorder, including vaccinations, chemicals in food or water, or not breastfeeding during infancy. However, the most likely cause, as mentioned above, is trauma during birth that damages the upper, or cervical, spine just below the skull. This can happen as a result of either a c-section or the use of forceps for delivery.

As a result of the force needed to help deliver the infant, the vertebrae of the cervical spine may be forced out of alignment. In doing so, the vertebrae can then place pressure on the nerves leading in and out of the spinal cord, therefore interfering with proper signaling between the brain and the central nervous system, which in turn can affect signaling to the peripheral nervous system. If the peripheral nervous system is not able to send and receive proper signals to and from the brain, it can very well lead to problems with being able to properly process sensory stimuli.

Chiropractic Care

The core belief of all chiropractic care is that misalignments of the vertebrae are the root cause of many, if not all, injuries and illness in the body. Therefore, it should follow the getting the vertebrae back into their correct alignment should help alleviate injury and illness. In the case of sensory processing disorder, Dr. Horst will focus on realigning the cervical vertebrae. In order to do this, he uses specific techniques to open up the space between the vertebrae, which allows them enough room to shift back into alignment, which then relieves the pressure on adjacent nerves and helps restore proper functioning to the central and peripheral nervous systems.

During a child’s first five years of life, the brain is forming a tremendous number of new neural pathways based on all types of sensory inputs. Sensory processing disorder can cause serious developmental delays during this crucial time in a child’s life. Fortunately, a proper diagnosis and chiropractic care early on can help prevent more serious issues later on in life.